E/CN.4/2002/73/Add.2 page 46 185. In Indonesia, the Chinese community has apparently from time to time suffered severe persecution, especially in periods of civil unrest. In particular, many Chinese women were victims of rape and of violence stirred up by organized groups during the 1998 riots (E/CN.4/1999/15, paras. 119 to 126). 186. In Afghanistan, a country with a strong ethnic diversity, religious extremism affects, as already stated, the whole of society, including its non-Muslim components. Women appear to suffer most owing to severe restrictions in all areas of family and social life (E/CN.4/1998/6, para. 60). The Taliban’s manipulation of Afghan women has made the tragedy of Afghan women part of the tragedy of Afghanistan. It is reported, for example, that, in their policy of ethnic cleansing, the Taliban even perpetrate forced marriages so that children born of such unions will belong to their ethnic group, the Pashtun, and as a way of humiliating and getting rid of other ethnicities.259 Women are attacked not because they are women but because they are members of their community. 187. Sex tourism is to some extent a form of aggravated discrimination against women insofar as disrespect towards women and girls is exacerbated by the absence of taboos regarding the portrayal and treatment of women and girls of different nationalities or ethnic backgrounds. 188. Also, the fact that a religion is recognized as a State religion or as a religion of the State or that its followers comprise the majority of the population can create situations of aggravated discrimination towards women belonging to ethnoreligious minorities when the State or society seeks to impose its view of women on those women who do not follow the official or majority religion.260 III. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 189. Women’s status in the light of religion, beliefs and traditions forms as a polymorphous whole where religion, ancient ancestral customs and age-old religious or non-religious traditions coexist with the demands of modernity, and hence with the legal challenging of traditions, within a diverse and highly contrasting setting, in which respect for human rights is paramount. The factual aspects of the study of this issue have highlighted the huge variety of scenarios. Some relate to practices that pose a threat to women’s health and lives. Others are concerned with discrimination affecting the legal and social status of women. There are also more widespread and at the same time more pernicious situations involving values based on patriarchal patterns fostered by an interpretation of religion or cultural heritage entrenched in the collective consciousness, where religious factors are not expressly or specifically manifested. 190. Notwithstanding this variety, it has been shown that many practices, although founded on religion, are attributable more or solely to cultural interpretations of religious precepts. It has been observed that culture in some cases conflicts with the prescriptions of religion. The factual aspects have shown that cultural practices which are injurious to women’s status are encouraged by factors such as female and male illiteracy, women’s low level of representation in public life, lack of information and a cultural fatalism in the face of what is wrongly regarded as the realm of the sacred. It has also been seen that many practices have declined owing to the effects of different factors mostly linked to affirmative State policy successfully aimed at attacking the deep roots of those practices by altering cultural patterns through reforms involving all areas of social and family life.